Alerting All Animators--To showcase the talent the Southwest has to offer, the New Mexico Adobe User Group is hosting its first annual “Best in the SW Flash Animation and Motions Graphics Festival.” As a way of celebrating the recent growth of the film industry in New Mexico, the group is encouraging local creative types to participate in this digitally animated event. Grand prize is Adobe Studio 8--a tasty bit of software with a retail value of $999! Prizes will be awarded for Best of Show, Best Cartoon, Best Motion Graphic and Best Student Work. Deadline to enter is midnight, Nov. 26, 2006. Best in the SW Animation Festival will take place Dec. 2, from 4 to 5 p.m. at the close of AdobeQuerque, the Adobe Creative Tools Mini-Conference taking place at UNM’s Continuing Ed. Winning entries will be posted on the Best in the SW website. For complete details, visit the website (www.bestinthesw.com) or e-mail info@bestinthesw.com. For more information about the Adobe Users Group or details on the AdobeQuerque conference, log on to www.nmaug.com.

Ensemble history lesson brings the Vietnam era into sharp focus

By Devin D. O’Leary

I was born in 1968, that pivotal year in which American innocence curled up and died alongside Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy. Most of my memories of that history-making time, quite naturally, revolve around sleeping, crying and staring at breasts. (Which, come to think of it, isn't all that different from my memories of freshman year at college.) Others, of course, have much more vivid recollections of the era.

Trippy sci-fi/fantasy/romance gets lost somewhere in space and time

By Devin D. O’Leary

There’s a lot to admire but not quite as much to love about The Fountain, the new film from edgy indie director Darren Aronofsky (Pi, Requiem for a Dream). Difficult to discuss and impossible to categorize, the film is a beautiful, brilliant and frequently baffling art house tone poem about life, death and immortality. While The Fountain’s commercial prospects are dim at best, it wouldn’t be at all strange to find the film an eventual object of curious cult worship.

“My Boys” on TBS

By Devin D. O’Leary

To say that “My Boys,” the new sitcom from TBS, is inspired by “Sex and the City” is a bit of an understatement. It’s basically the same show, tweaked slightly to ensure slightly more male demographic appeal.

The Week in Sloth

Thursday 23

“Half-Pint Mockumentary” (TV Land 9 p.m.) TV Land celebrates the holiday at hand with a “Thanksgiving on the Prairie” marathon, featuring three episodes of “Little House on the Prairie” and this curiosity piece. It’s a mockumentary (obviously) about an obsessive rock band named after Pa’s affectionate nickname for Laura Ingles Wilder. The members (men and women) even dress in prairie skirts, bonnets and pigtails. ... What are they smoking at TV Land?